Richard Aoki and The Black Power Movements

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An individual who was developed from the black power movements, was Richard Aoki, a third generation Japanese American. He had spent time living in the internment camps as a child during the second world war. When he grew up, he became one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party, and the only Asian American to have held a formal leadership position as "Field Marshall". He worked in the Black Panther party by arming them with weapons and training them in firearm usage. He continued his work by helping lead the Third World Liberation Front strike at Berkeley in 1969. This demonstration was to draw together the experiences of the oppression that third world minorities had experienced throughout their colonization period, from the United States. Experiences such as genocide of native Americans, enslavement of Africans, colonization of Chicanos, and the Asian immigration exclusion acts. The movements were created in order to achieve independence and demanded political power for those third world minorities who were had been, and were still being oppressed. They employed tactics such as, "informational picketing, blocking of campus entrances, mass rallies and teach-ins. Popular support was often met with repression in the form of police arrests, teargas and campus disciplinary actions." This impactful demonstration led to a large number of Asian American students, to become involved in community based organizing efforts, to increase awareness and strength for the Asian American movements. These students worked to produce vital means in which they were able to attain more information on their roots and the struggles that their ancestors had gone through. By fighting to create college curriculums that represented their histori... ... middle of paper ... ...k." Diss. 2014. National Urban League. National Urban League, 19 Mar. 2014. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. "New York School Boycott." Civil Rights Digital Library. University System of Georgia, 20 Nov. 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. . Rosenfield, Seth. "Richard Aoki, Man Who Armed Black Panthers, Was FBI Informant." Huffington Post. N.p., 21 Aug. 2012. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. Saenz, Christina. "What Martin Luther King Jr. Did for the Latino Civil Rights Movements." Palante Latino. Pa'lante Latino, 17 Jan. 2011. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. Tachiki, Amy; Wong, Eddie; Odo, Franklin, eds. (1971). Roots: An Asian American Reader. University of California, Los Angeles Press. Uyematsu, Amy. "The Emergence of Yellow Power." Diss. Arkansas Tech U, 1969. ATU, 1969. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. .

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